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Sunday, November 21st, 2010
Three books I read this summer that I wanted to write about but didn't much of substance. Either of the first two would be great by itself, it was a real treat to read them both in succession.
- Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld. This is Hinnefeld's second novel and seems like a real breakthrough. I liked In Hovering Flight a lot but it did not seem like a "masterpiece" the way I can picture talking about this book (once I get around to/figure out what to post about it).
- Out of the Mountains by Meredith Sue Willis.
I talk to Vashie on the phone and visit occasionally, but I never run her errands. I don't drive her to the doctor, and I don't pick up her groceries.
Her daughter Ruth doesn't either, but Ruth is a classic agoraphobic, a direct result of having Vashie as a mother, in my opinion. Vashie was even worse as a mother than as a third grade teacher. We're all widows now, Vashie, Ruth, me, and my friend Ursula Rose, who was having the tag sale in front of her late husband's mansion the day Vashie came lurching toward us on her walker, pausing to rest when she thought we were watching.
-- "The Scandalous Roy Critchfield"
Such a clear, genuine voice.
- The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago. This book seems almost the equal of Balthazar and Blimunda to me but I'm not sure how to back this up -- my plan was to write a review of it to submit to Quarterly Conversation or similar, but I got stuck on recommending it rather then writing about it. Really a sheer pleasure to read.
posted evening of November 21st, 2010: Respond
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In the midst of that curious crowd, the Christ of Elqui was not silent. On the contrary: with the purple taffeta of his cape broiling under the sun he stood, he turned toward the dead man. An absent, almost translucent look was on his face, like someone who is looking at a mirage in the desert. He seemed to be struggling with a deep-seated psychic dilemma. After an instant which seemed an eternity, with a histrionic wave, he looked away from the dead man; he raised both arms above his head and opened his mouth to speak, bearing infinite pain in the inflections of his voice:
— I am sorry, my brothers, but I can do nothing; the sublime art of resurrection belongs exclusively to God the Father.
But the miners had not come to hear rejection, rejection wrapped up in the celophane of pretty phrases. Surrounding him, their wiry beards almost touching him, they pleaded, they demanded, they begged him in the name of God Most Holy, o Lord Christ, at least try it. That it will cost him nothing to try. That all he need do is to place his blessed hands over the body of their friend — as they have seen him do for the infirm among them, all these days — and to recite a few ave marias or a pater noster. Or whatever he might find to say. He must know better than them which things one must say to the ancient one on high, to convince him. And who knows, perhaps God in his moment will understand, and take pity on their comrade, the best among strong working men, who has left in this vale of tears a widow, still young, and a crowd of seven little kids, imagine it, o Lord, seven children, evenly spaced, all still quite young.
— This poor kid Lazarus, his body here with us — cried one of them, turning to the deceased, laying his arms in a cross over his chest — you could say he is a countryman of yours, sir, for just like you, as we have read of you, he was born in a village of Coquimbo province.
The Christ of Elqui lifted his gaze to the eastern sky. For a moment he appeared fascinated by a far-off flock of birds, flying in slow circles above the gravel plain, flying over the dusty cement of the salitrera. Pulling at his bushy beard, thinking and rethinking what he was going to say, he spoke in an apologetic tone:
— We all know where we were born, o my brothers, but not where our bones will lie buried.
El arte de la resurrección is seeming like one of the best novels I've ever read. Do I overstate? Perhaps -- translating is a different lens through which to view the reading process, it adds a certain meta-narrative tension that is not always present (or present to varying degrees) when reading my own English. But these fantastic paragraphs are chosen practically at random from the cornucopia of the first couple of chapters that I've read so far.
The gentle, brutal good humor of the narrator's relationship with his characters and his scenes-- the switch for instance to second person when the miners address the Christ of Elqui and then quickly back to third, so there is some confusion about where the focus should lie, turns the reader's head, makes him wipe his forehead in disbelief.
posted evening of November 21st, 2010: Respond
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
Via a post of LanguageHat's I discover a new work that is utterly sui generis -- author Tom Phillips' ongoing project A Humument -- potentially infinite (or Babelianly astronomically finite) stories extracted selectively from W.H. Mallock's novel A Human Document, by altering the book:
This reminds me in certain ways of asemic writing -- though clearly the words have meaning, are to be read as pieces of language and not only as a visual arrangement of forms, I react to them as I would to the shapes and scribbles of Roberto Altmann or Mindy Fisher or Serafini, where the semantic element of the language is "all in my head".
posted evening of November 19th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
In all the years he had been carrying his lessons through the land, preaching his axioms, counsels and wise thoughts regarding the good of Humanity -- and declaring in passing that the Day of Judgement is at hand, repent, sinners, before it is too late -- this was the first he had ever experienced a success of such sublime profundity. And it had taken place in the dry desert of Atacama, more precisely in the wasteland of a saltpetre mining camp, the least likely setting for a miracle. And to top it off the dead man had been named Lazarus.
-- The art of resurrection
Hernán Rivera Letelier
posted evening of November 17th, 2010: Respond
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Mindy Fisher's ornaglyphic logograms resonate between violence and innocence:
(Found thanks to The New Postliterate)
posted evening of November 17th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, November 14th, 2010
 A new story from Jorge López, a walk through his neighborhood in Santiago.
It all happened in Providencia
by Jorge López
On the metro, at Manuel Montt station. An old woman is having trouble trying to get off, unable to find a handhold anywhere. The train brakes and the woman steadies herself against me. I hold her up, I give her my hand. Hold on, I say. She grips my hand firmly and smiles at me. Thank you, you’re very kind. I hold her up and help her move up until she’s able to get to the exit. She again thanks me. Have a good day, I say. You too, young man.
That’s all it would have been, one event in the course of the day, if it weren’t for a voice -- grave, reproachful -- inside the train car as the doors closed.
-- That lady’s too old to be fooling anybody.
The light at the corner of Guardia Vieja and 11 de Septiembre is red; a few pedestrians are waiting to cross. I’m watching, my earphones on, a bit cut off from the world. In the few seconds of silence between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, I overhear a bit of conversation between two of them, perhaps a mother and her daughter.
-- Well, it was just that poor-person smell!
The way poverty smells. It hurts me, it moves me to hear that; what moves me the most is that I recognize it, I see its reflection in myself. I too have spoken of the odor “of poor people,†always doing an embarrassed double-take, I who work with poor people, it has nothing to do with poverty.
I’m walking along Providencia, GalerÃa Drugstore is one of those over-designed, over-priced shops. One of the customers is saying to the woman at the counter:
-- You know, I have to make so many adjustments when I come by here, I live up in La Dehesa, I never come down here...
I leave the store quickly, almost automatically.
Night is falling on a rainy day. A man on the sidewalk, a drunkard, a homeless man I’m sure, sheltered by the eaves of the Portal Lyon. It’s not unusual to see homeless around here. Today it is cold, and he is not even covered by the customary cardboard boxes. I move a bit closer and notice the smell of spilt wine. So drunk he cannot stand up, I guess. But it’s not the ordinary box wine. Shards of glass are glittering on the sidewalk, I step carefully trying to avoid them. Did he throw the bottle down after he drank the last drops? Did somebody smash the bottle against him? I don’t see any blood, he appears to be conscious, sitting, doesn’t seem to be hurt. I don’t ask him what happened, just go on my way, don’t get involved.
I’m as much to blame as anyone, only thinking of how to get home without getting wet, the few more blocks remaining, perhaps the McDonald’s on my street will still be open.
At what point did we lose our solidarity, our understanding? We shut ourselves off so coarsely from the world. When did this moment come?
posted afternoon of November 14th, 2010: 3 responses
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Reading Rivera Letelier is putting me in mind of Faulkner or Saramago. His sentences have a dense lushness, a gentle rhythm that allows the mind to wander and then pulls it back in to the flow of the syntax. (This effect is really heightened for me by the sentences being in a language I don't fully understand -- I find myself reading over several times, first to establish the rhythm, then slower, to get a fuller understanding of the meaning, then over, slowly the rhythm and the narrative come into sync for me.)
posted afternoon of November 14th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, November 12th, 2010
 At the forefront of Mexican literature stands Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who lived from 1651 to 1695; her birthday has been National Book Day in Mexico since 1979.
Dime vencedor Rapaz,
vencido de mi constancia,
¿Qué ha sacado tu arrogancia
de alterar mi firme paz?
Que aunque de vencer capaz
es la punta de tu arpón
el más duro corazón
¿qué importa el tiro violento,
si a pesar del vencimiento
queda viva la razón?
 Tell me Rapacious conqueror
conquered by my persistence --
Where has your arrogance gone,
how will you disrupt my solid grace?
Now even though you conquer
with the tip of your harpoon
the hardest heart
What matters this violent rage
if in spite of your conquest
reason lives on?
↻...done
posted evening of November 12th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Lead ions collide in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN,
generating temperatures a million times hotter than the heart of the sun
and producing a quark-gluon plasma.
posted morning of November 11th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Your wallpaper search is over: this picture by Roland and Julia Seitre is all you will ever need for desktop background. (Select, of course, for it to be "tiled" rather than "stretched".)
(picture removed. You can view it at the Seitres' website. However do not download it for personal use without asking their permission.)
posted evening of November 10th, 2010: 3 responses
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